Russian Business Network goes dark

A quick link from the UK register: Controversial Russian Business Network drops offline.

In a nutshell, Russian Business Netwrk (RBN) is a hosting company that offerred "bulletproof hosting" to spammers, malware distributors, phishing and other unsavory activites suddenly went off line around 0200 GMT yesterday. It is speculated that their upstreams, Tiscali.uk and C41 have pulled the plug, possibly because of a Washington Post expose written last month.

More on the story:

• Washington Post: Russian Business Network: Down, But Not Out
• cidr-report.org: Report showing that RBN has relinquished large chunks of address space.
• Trend Labs: RBN goes *Poof*
• Dark Reading: Russian Business Network Disappears
  

Meanwhile, Spamhaus speculates that the RBN is already setting up operations in China.

Intellectual Intercourse on Reynolds lawsuits

I've been waiting until after David Ritz's court case was over to discuss certain issues, but MickC of Intellectual Intercourse has brought them up in in a column he wrote yesterday. It's good stuff; take a moment to read it and then come back here ...

Are you back? Good. Here's the scoop. You may have heard the news that the RIAA is suing Usenet or something to that effect. Actually, who they're suing is usenet.com. It's an internet site which specializes in uncensored and unlogged downloads, as well as a very complete feed. From their advertising: "... its service is the best way to get 'free' music now that 'file sharing websites are getting shut down..."

Update: I'm told that the real issue isn't so much unlogged downloads as anonymized uploads.

There's more to the story, but the interesting point is this: usenet.com is owned by Jerry Reynolds. The same porn spammer who sued me and who is currently suing David Ritz. It looks like Reynolds is going to be spending a lot of time in court over the next few months, and for a change, it won't be harassing anti-spammers.

More on the story:

• Billboard: Labels Sue Usenet Service
• c|net: RIAA tries to pull plug on Usenet. Seriously.
• Tech.Blorge: Usenet.com are idiots, get sued.
• Slashdot: RIAA Sues Usenet.com
  
• Usenet.com: Free downloads

An excerpt from the usenet.com web page:

What Exactly Can You Download in Usenet? Anything and everything. Literally. There are movies, mp3s, cartoons, wallpapers, sounds, videos, pictures, warez, games, software and much more...

There's more to this case and others, but that will still have to wait until David's case is out of court. This hasn't happened yet, and David's legal expenses are still astronomical. I remind my readers that donations to his legal fund can be made directly through his lawyers at

David Ritz
c/o Debra S. Koenig
Godfrey and Kahn, S.C.
780 N Water Street
Milwaukee WI 53202

Or via Paypal or credit card.